My wife and I thought your story on Fulton’s Bottom very poignant (“‘The Greatest Place on Earth,'” Cover Story, Sept. 12). I had written a poem about the very same thing at the time of the Reconciliation ceremony, held not far from there, titled “Fulton’s Bottom”:
Big ball, fiery red —
Pendulum of time,
Sink into the river’s source
Below the horizon line.
Water wind through mountains,
Water wear away,
Stony tomb of river bank
And confines of the clay.
Voices in the water
Rise and murmer in the swirl,
By the banks of Fulton’s Bottom
Where a neighborhood once stood.
Big ball, steel gray fist
Wreck, split and shatter
Some thought it didn’t matter —
Bulldozer and backhoe razed them away.
Those that lived there
Were sent to stray and scatter
To forgotten corners of the town,
Invisibility renewed.
Missing are the roofs and ceilings,
Gone foundations and the walls,
But not indifference or feelings —
The years have’t scraped them away.
Voices in the water
Swirl and rise un-silenced
To find a way to reconcile
And put the past behind us.
Water wind through mountains,
Water wear away,
Stony tomb of riverbank
And confines of the clay.
Tom BrownHenrico
